Don't You Cry For The Lost (Smile For The Living)
by RowenaR
Summary: Stacker Pentecost, watching his Jaeger crews deal with the pressure of war.


**A/N: **A Holiday Fic Request Meme fic, a day lat but hopefully still enjoyable :)

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**Don't You Cry For the Lost (Smile For the Living)**

"_Don't you cry for the lost  
Smile for the living  
Get what you need and give what you're given  
Life's for the living so live it  
Or you're better off dead."_

_Passenger, "Life's For The Living"_

To you, they're all children. You have known all of them since their respective entries into the Jaeger Academy program, you have watched them learn to navigate the Drift, think as one, act as one, fall apart as one. It doesn't matter how old they are, to you they're all children. Aleksis Kaidonovsky is only four years your junior, Sasha only six years, but to you, those four years could be forty, those six years could be sixty.

And yet you would be lying if you said you weren't surprised at all when you see smoke emanating from the Wei brothers' quarters a few weeks after relocating the remains of the PPDC to the Hong Kong Shatterdome. You should, in hindsight, have known that something was up when Sasha muttered about helping the Wei brothers to fix their "problem with life" so you might have been surprised at the smoke but you are sure as hell not surprised at all at the Kaidonovskys exchanging very telling smirks in the mess hall. It doesn't even take half a brain to draw the connection between two smirking Russians and three soot-faced Chinese.

Of course you have to act, have to keep order and do your job. You chew out the Russians and remind them that you're all in the same boat now, can't afford friction in the ranks, the whole nine yards, and they take your riot act without batting an eyelash and two days later, the triplets are standing in the exact same spot, getting the exact same speech.

It takes you all until Chuck Hansen appears to muster in nothing but his boxers two weeks after the Russians get their due from the triplets that this might be a bigger problem than you thought. Hansen bears it with astounding dignity and it takes a very thorough interrogation to learn that negligence was not the reason why he couldn't adhere to grooming standards that morning. Herc believes him when he says that the boxers really were the only thing mysteriously left in his locker this morning, so you do, too. If Chuck Hansen were lying, his father would have been the one to wield the proverbial headman's sword, without any qualms.

No one steps forward or betrays themselves this time, and because Chuck Hansen is Chuck Hansen, it could be either of the other Jaeger crews. It could even be one of the LOCCENT officers. Hell, it could be a bloody janitor. You keep looking for any signs of smugness or amusement for a good three weeks of _nothing_ happening and just when you thought they'd all gotten whatever was making them itch out of their systems, Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha are found giving each other the finger and no one has any idea how _that_ could happen.

That's when you finally give it up. Of course you have people going through security camera footage, repair logs, anything that could help identify the evil genius behind this nearly impossible feat but they don't find anything and after that, you just let it run its course. The PPDC is hemorrhaging Jaegers and pilots and the Kaiju attacks seem to come in faster now and everyone is under an extreme amount of strain and maybe pranking each other is just a way for the Jaeger crews to let off some of that steam.

Pilots, you decide, have always been pilots and will always stay pilots and that means that they'll all be children until they die in one of their giant machines of war and they all _know_ it. They're low on funds everywhere, including mental health and you know what the full knowledge of your own mortality combined with piloting something that gives you the full illusion of being invincible, of being _immortal_ can do to you, so you let them blow it all off in sudden, unpredictable bouts of painting smiley faces on Jaegers and a complete redecorating of quarters and humiliatingly cute baby pictures being broadcast across the entire Shatterdome.

You let it run its course and it takes you all until the moment Mako defeats Beckett to realize that you never even suspected _her_ of having any part in the five year prank war going on between your Jaeger crews. And here she is downing one of the most talented pilots you had the misfortune to command and you realize that there is more to Mako than you realized, that she is capable of a great many things you didn't think she had in her and you'll be damned if it hadn't been her all along. You can barely make it through the day, barely make it to your quarters but when you do, it's the first time in five years that you allow yourself to laugh.

You're in excruciating pain, as much as you've ever been since they diagnosed you with terminal cancer and you feel your heart breaking because you know that eventually, you will have to let her go, will have to watch her climb into one of those metal monsters and fight for her life but right now, right in this moment, the thought of Raleigh Beckett not even knowing of what he's getting himself into, of Raleigh Beckett getting more, _much_ more than he bargained for is so all-encompassingly _hilarious_ that you just laugh and laugh and laugh.

They're all just children to you and right now, you're every inch the proud father you never thought you'd even be. Proud and amused and because there's a chance you won't wake up tomorrow, as it has been the way since they told you that your days were numbered, you savor the moment, make it last as long as you can. There's not much left to do for you, anyway, and they may all still be children but that's what they taught you, and you're grateful. Whatever's going to happen tomorrow, in six hours, in the next five minutes, you know now that you'll always have that, you know now that it's always been worth it. And really, what more do you want?


End file.
